News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad blockers on app store. Parent comment

Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by ameshkov on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:10PM (#17197435)
You may have looked on a bad one.

System-wide blockers on both iOS and Android do use the VPN API, but the idea is to intercept your outgoing traffic on the TUN interface, emulate the TCP/IP stack, and filter it locally, right on your device.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by 49bc on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:18PM (#17197520)
How do you know which one the app is doing? From my perspective the vpn was “on”
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by ameshkov on Thursday May 31, 2018 @02:23PM (#17198748)
The easiest way would be to visit a website like "whatsmyip" and check that your IP address stays the same.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by hedora on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:22PM (#17197567)
Not perfect, but you could connect to wifi, and look at the connections the phone makes.

Of course, it could change its behavior if it detects a cellular connection...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by saagarjha on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:57PM (#17197931)
A better way would be to download the app and reverse engineer the binary.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by 49bc on Thursday May 31, 2018 @01:49PM (#17198442)
And do that every single time there’s an update?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by gruez on Thursday May 31, 2018 @03:03PM (#17199070)
or download an open source version on f-droid
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon follows Google and Apple and bans system-wide ad b... by sofaofthedamned on Thursday May 31, 2018 @12:44PM (#17197774)
Exactly. It's a VPN in name only, and the only reason is to route traffic to be able to bypass the security features in the OS.
[ Parent | on HN ]